The Bucolic Plague

  We didn’t need to talk much, thankfully, as we drove down the pretty route that Doug and Garth had picked out for us. Just out of town we passed a picturesque pond and witnessed a flock of geese splash down for a pit stop on its way south. A little farther beyond we passed a herd of Holstein cows on a hill—black and white polka dots against the brilliant orange sugar maples. About four miles away we passed a tiny outcropping of farmhouses punctuated by an archetypal gleaming white wooden church. The Sunday service had just let out. Here was the church. Here was the steeple. Open up the doors and out came the people.

  “Wait. Slow down. Here’s another historical sign.” I would stop for anything to prolong our idyllic getaway. Luckily the entire area seemed to be saturated with state historical society roadside plaques. Whoever the local state senator was, he was certainly bringing home the bronze.

  This particular sign was planted on the road in front of an elaborate white house. It was unlike any house that we’d seen in the area. Most of the other homes in the vicinity were either simple turn-of-the-century farmhouses or prefabricated beige boxes.

  “What’s the sign say?” Brent asked. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out.

  “The Beekman Mansion. Built 1802. William Beekman was first judge of court held in Schoharie County. Died here on November 26, 1845. Buried on this farm.”

  “Is it a museum?”

  “I don’t know.” It looked like a museum. I wasn’t exactly an architecture buff, but I remembered enough from when my parents dragged me to Williamsburg, Virginia, as a child to recognize the structure as vaguely Federal. Maybe with a slight Georgian twist. It had white balustrades around the roofline and intricately carved arched moldings above each window. Even in the shade of the double row of centuries-old sugar maples in formation across the front yard, the white clapboard seemed to glow. But the most amazing feature was a massive forty-five-paned arched Palladian window smack in the center of the second floor.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Brent said. I knew that he was appreciating entirely different features than I was. Being from the South, he was probably staring at the ornate balustrades and what looked to be a porch with pillars that wrapped around the back and sides. It definitely had a plantation gene somewhere in its bones.

  Being more northern, I loved its elegant but simple symmetry—its four hidden chimneys built right into the boxy home, the ornate but understated carvings painted white against the white background.

  With its peculiar and unique details, the house was like a perfect combination of Brent and me—both southern and northern in equal complementary measures.

  “Drive up farther,” I said. “We’ll see if it’s open.” A building this beautiful had to be a museum. Nobody had a right to own it all to themselves.

  As we inched forward, we realized there was a barn just to the south of it—a perfect red barn in the architectural style of Fisher-Price. The white house with the red barn, with the green manicured grass, with the orange maples…It was like something out of a Disney movie. I half expected an animatronic milkmaid to stick her head out of the hayloft door and wave at us.

  This was nothing like the farms I grew up around in Wisconsin, where the house was generally an afterthought to the outbuildings, and a yard was considered to be whatever patches of grass grew up through the mud. Farms are messy, I’d learned. Really messy. When your business is dependent on inventory that shits wherever it feels like, you can’t really be a stickler for neatness.

  This farm had style—loads of it. It was, if there was such a thing, a New York City farm.

  “I have to see the inside of this place,” I said to Brent. He nodded his head in agreement. “Pull in the driveway.”

  We both sucked in our breath at the same time.

  Just behind one of the stone pillars on either side of the driveway was another sign:

  REALTY USA. 518-555-3423, MICHELLE CURRAN. REDUCED.

  I read it over at least three times. I was afraid to speak, in case it might break some spell and the sign would disappear. I looked over. Brent was staring at it just as intently.

  Then he turned to stare at me.

  There was no reason to say anything. We both knew what was coming next. Brent reached for his phone, while I found a pencil and paper to take down whatever information he relayed. He dialed the number and put the phone to his ear. I’m pretty sure his hand was shaking.

  “There’s no answer,” Brent said. “Shit.”

  I’d never heard Brent swear before—or “cuss” as he phrased it with his southern idiom. Being from a family who built and started their own fundamentalist church, Brent was still afflicted with a few good habits he couldn’t shake.

  “Here, call the guys at the hotel. They know everything about this town,” I said, trying to disguise the desperation in my voice. I handed him the hotel’s brochure that I’d taken as I left. I knew that if we didn’t see this house today, we never would. Not only was there a good chance that I could never find Sharon Springs on a map again, but there was also the reality that the moment we returned to the city we would be sucked back into our respective whirlwinds and completely forget to click our heels to come back to the farm.

  “Hi, Doug?” Brent said into the phone. “It’s Josh and Brent. We were guests of the hotel last night?” Doug apparently remembered us, and Brent continued. “We were taking the road you told us to take out of town, and we saw this house for sale—it’s white, with a red b—Yes, the Beekman Mansion.”

  People call it by its name: the Beekman Mansion. As beautiful as it was, I wasn’t sure I would call it a mansion. Although I supposed when it was built in 1802, it was an even more impressive structure than it was today.

  While Brent talked with Doug, I was already imagining my life at the Beekman Mansion. I concluded that Brent and I would probably be known as the Beekman Boys. Or at least I hoped so. It would be far better than, say, the Fag Farmers.

  Yes, I thought to myself, I’d like to live in a mansion, even part-time on the weekends. A weekend mansion. A mansion in which to relax, unwind, and do other mansion-y things that I didn’t even know about yet. How could I? I’d never lived in a mansion. I wondered if there was a magazine I could get tips from. Mansion Living. Or Today’s Mansion.

  And then there was the whole farm aspect of the mansion. Looking around, there seemed to be a great deal of land included with it. I could put in a vegetable garden. There’d be no more hoofing it down to Union Square to buy fifteen-dollar organic frisée. We could get a cow. Every farm needs a cow. Surely someone would help us take care of it during the week in exchange for free milk. And chickens! We’d get the kind that laid the blue eggs, like Martha had. We’d make our houseguests rise with the roosters and go get their own eggs for breakfast.

  I stopped myself. This was ludicrous. We were twice as far away from the city as Fire Island or the Hamptons. Even if, by some chance, we could afford a mansion, how would we get up here every week? How would we take care of things?

  Brent hung up the phone.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s been for sale for over four years. That little house over there is the caretaker’s house.” He pointed to a small modular home I hadn’t even noticed on the far side of the barn.

  “Did they know how much it’s selling for?”

  “A lot.”

  “A lot a lot? Or just ‘a lot.’”

  “A lot a lot. A million.”

  “You’re kidding me. Who would pay a million dollars for something way out here?”

  “Still, can we see inside?” The fact that we couldn’t afford it in no way dampened my enthusiasm. It was probably completely run down on the inside anyway. A house this old probably had its rooms cut up, with each one remodeled during a different decade. And while owning a mansion was now firmly on my life’s wish list, a fixer-upper mansion certainly wasn’t.

  “Michelle, the real estate agent, happens to be filling in for one of the br
unch hostesses at the hotel,” Brent said. “It’s slow so they said she could be here in five minutes.”

  Of course she could, I thought. If I were a real estate agent in the middle of nowhere with a million-dollar mansion to unload, I wouldn’t care how many people were waiting for their eggs Benedict.

  Brent and I passed the time silently while we waited for Michelle to arrive. We were both too afraid to mention our thoughts aloud. They were too far-fetched to deserve being spoken. We weren’t sure if the caretaker was home or not, so we didn’t want to risk getting out to scout around the place. But simply sitting there at the end of the driveway with Brent gave me a sense of calm. The only noise was the occasional orange leaf that wafted down onto the car’s roof. It was the same sort of relaxed as last night’s relaxed, back at the hotel. Maybe even more relaxed. I wasn’t sure of the last time I felt this way.

  Michelle pulled her SUV behind us and honked. As she stepped out of her car, I wondered how someone like her wound up selling real estate way the hell out here. She was incredibly stylish, wearing a hot-pink-and-orange-patterned wrap dress. It screamed “fashion magazine editor” far more than “part-time brunch hostess.” She was impossibly thin and tall—though maybe no taller than average once out of her knee-high, four-inch-heeled leather boots. The only thing that gave her away as a real estate agent was the way she immediately pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head. They must teach that in real estate school. Look ’em in the eye. Don’t let ’em get away.

  “Hi there,” she sang. “Doug and Garth told me all about you.” That’s a good sign, I thought. We’re already a gear in the local rumor mill. Up close, it was hard to tell Michelle’s age. She could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty—another common real estate trait. “What do you think?” she continued. “Pretty impressive, huh?”

  Impressive, yes. Attainable, no. Part of me felt horrible for having brought her out here. Having moved around so much in my life, I think that leading on a real estate agent adds some of the deepest chinks to one’s karma.

  “It’s nice,” Brent said, poker-faced. “Can we get inside?”

  “Sure, that’s why I’m here.” Michelle smiled. “Follow me around to the side entrance.”

  As we walked across the yard, Michelle told us much of the same history that we’d learned from the sign out front. Stepping under the ancient maples made me feel historic myself. Old Judge Beekman probably planted these trees with his own hands.

  Michelle jiggled the keys in the lock. The door looked to be new or at least well taken care of. I’d expected to see the real flaws of such an old house once we got up close. But like Michelle’s face, it appeared timeless. Almost new.

  “There we go,” Michelle said, swinging open the side door and stepping aside for us to enter. “Most people come in this side door,” she continued. “It enters directly into the library.”

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was just like Williamsburg. Everything I could see had been restored to its original state—or even better, if that’s possible. The library had bright yellow wallpaper and ebony floors that shone so brightly that the view from the windows reflected off them. The windows looked to be original too, with wavy uneven glass. At the far side of the room were built-in bookshelves on either side of an ornate, carved arch that led to another large, bright room—probably the formal living room.

  There wasn’t a speck of dust or cobweb in sight. The ancient house smelled like lemon-scented Pledge. Everything sparkled: the brass chandeliers, the wavy old panes in the windows. The only sign of negligence was the smattering of dead flies underneath each and every window. Michelle caught me looking at them.

  “Even though the owner rarely visits, there is a housekeeper who comes once a week,” she explained. “Perhaps the vacuum is broken.” She quickly changed the subject. “There are seven fireplaces—all in working order. Two of them are completely original, and the others were rebuilt in their original locations.” As she narrated the way through the first floor, I had a hard time listening. There were incredible details everywhere that diverted my attention.

  “This center hall is over fifteen feet wide,” she went on. “As you can see, it runs the entire length of the house, with exits at the front door and onto the wraparound porch. There is a second hall just like it directly upstairs.”

  Everything in the house looked as if it must have looked on the day that William Beekman and his family moved in. I could tell that the wallpaper and paint choices had been meticulously researched, as were the hardware on the doors, which also looked to be original. The swooping banister on the main stairway in the center hall was carved out of a single piece of cherry wood, according to Michelle. As I ran my hand across its perfectly smooth surface, she confirmed that it too was original. It had been found in the barn while the previous owners were doing the renovation.

  “Who were the previous owners?” I asked, thinking that whoever they were, they were flush enough to spend far more than a million dollars renovating a house they were willing to sell for only a million dollars.

  “They live down in the city,” Michelle answered. “Or at least the widow does. This renovation was really her husband’s passion. They have houses all over. He died six years ago.”

  “Where in the city?” Brent asked. I thought he was being a little too nosy, but since he rarely asked a question without a reason, I was willing to let him go on to see where he was heading.

  “The east seventies, I think,” Michelle answered.

  “Maybe I know her,” he said. “I used to be a geriatrician at Mount Sinai. We had a lot of patients from that area of town.” When Brent still worked at the hospital, he often tended to VIP patients—i.e., those who had donated large sums of money in hopes of one day dying with better service. We’d get calls at home at all hours of the night. I grew accustomed to being woken up from a deep sleep by a hospital phone call informing Brent that a 104-year-old billionaire patient had died “unexpectedly” in his sleep. Nowadays I was woken up by Brent’s BlackBerry, which buzzed all night with a stream of e-mails from Martha, who only slept four hours a day.

  “Her name is Edith. Edith Selzner,” Michelle added.

  “Nope,” Brent said, “doesn’t ring a bell.” But I saw where Brent was going with this. Now that we’d gotten the owner’s name and neighborhood, we could look her up and contact her. If anyone could work over an Upper East Side widow till she caved in on price, it was a good-looking “single” geriatrician. These women always had some daughter/niece/cousin they needed to marry off. And for this place, I’d actually let Brent get married to a nice Waspy girl…as long as I could come visit.

  The tour continued through the second floor, where there were five immaculate bedrooms, each of which had its own bathroom. The wide center hallway on the second floor was identical to the one below, except that it ended with the massive Palladian window overlooking the ancient maple trees. The fiery leaves outside made the entire cavernous hallway—large enough for ballroom dancing—glow.

  “That’s everything inside,” Michelle said. “Would you like to see the crypt?”

  “The what?” I said.

  “The crypt,” she repeated. “The Beekman Family Crypt. It’s just in the side yard.”

  Of course I wanted to see the crypt. Who wouldn’t? I wondered how she described that in the real estate listing. “Historic Mansion, 5BRM / 5BA / 7 FP / 1 CRPT.”

  Michelle led us out the kitchen doorway, down a slight slope past a row of apple trees, which were perfectly hung with bright red fruit—even bigger and shinier than the ones we’d picked yesterday. Does the caretaker shine the apples? I wondered.

  We turned the corner around a slight hill and were met with a double stone–walled entry, ending at a solid iron door. There was a giant white obelisk at the entry, carved with the names and pertinent dates of Judge Beekman, his wife, and his children.

  “Um, are they still inside?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer. br />
  “Go ahead and look,” Michelle said, gesturing toward the iron door.

  “It’s unlocked?”

  “Yes. This whole area was overgrown during the time the mansion was abandoned,” she explained. “This entryway itself had completely collapsed. High school kids used to climb in through a hole on the roof and throw the bones around.”

  I made a mental note not to hire any local high school kids to do yard work. Once we owned the mansion, of course. And by now I was convinced that we would own this house.

  “But Mr. Selzner had it completely restored. Here, look at this,” Michelle said as she pulled what looked like a thick stick from between the cracks of the stone entry wall. “It’s a bone. There are lots of them around.”

  Oh God, she was right. In nearly every large crack in the wall was a protruding bone—arm bones, leg bones, unidentifiable bones. Whoever repaired this wall was one creepy motherfucker.

  “C’mon, let’s go in,” Michelle said cheerily.

  Brent slowly pulled open the heavy iron door and disappeared into the darkness, followed by Michelle. I wasn’t quite ready yet. I listened to their voices inside.

  “I’ve always thought this would make a great wine cellar,” I heard Michelle telling Brent.

  “Or a great place for a Halloween party,” Brent offered.

  Call me superstitious, but I didn’t think Old Judge Beekman would have appreciated sharing his final resting place with a case of Sutter Home.

  “Come on in, Josh,” Brent called out. “It’s cool.”

  I took a calming breath and stepped into the darkness. There was a slight step down, and immediately the temperature dropped at least 10 degrees. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the near complete darkness. My skin felt wet.

  In the dim light I began to make out shapes. The crypt was larger than I’d expected. It was difficult to tell how cavernous it was from the outside since it was built into a hill. The interior looked to be about ten feet by fifteen feet. It was entirely made of stone, and the ceiling was constructed in a graceful barrel arch. From it hung an iron candle chandelier. At the far end of the wall were what looked to be shelving. I deduced that that was where the coffins were once stacked.